The Business Environment, Trade and Entrepreneurship Ministry is negotiating, under the InvestRomania programme, for foreign companies implementing in Romania projects worth 1.8 billion euro, the relevant minister, Ilan Laufer, told a press conference on Friday.

"We have 86 ongoing investment projects under InvestRomania, worth 1.8 billion euro, namely over 17,900 potential new jobs. A very interesting piece of information: with support from InvestRomania a partnership has been implemented as a first between the IT sector of Romania and the BMW company, under industry 4.0 project. We want more projects of this type, we want to manage to bring major investors to Romania," the minister said.

He added that these are projects of foreign companies wanting to invest in Romania.

"There are private projects which the ministry is endorsing, which we are trying to implement in Romania. For some investments, we are competing with countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary. This amount would be the maximum potential to reach. Out of these, projects worth a significant amount of money are materialised, and the remaining are potential investments," Laufer added.

Laufer said the foreign direct investment in Romania amounted to 4.13 billion euros last year, the highest level of the past eight years, 19.4 percent higher than the previous year.

At the same time, foreign direct investment in the first four months of 2017 reached 1.13 billion euro, up 23.8 percent from the same period of the year before.